Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man

“Have you proven that?”

“No.”

“Have you at least interrogated the cousin?”

“Steven Billings died of lung cancer three years after the robbery.”

“But if you suspect Thorn and Billings, why believe that Zella had anything to do with it?”

“There was proof in her storage space. Do you have proof that any other employees of Rutgers are involved?”

“Not ironclad — no.”

“Then why are we here?” Antoinette asked.

Instead of answering I gestured toward a young waitress. Like all of the servers she was white and blond, wearing a little black dress.

“Yes, sir?”

“Cognac,” I said, “as close to twenty-five dollars a glass as you can get.”

She smiled at the ordering technique and went away.

“The corporate flowchart indicates that you don’t report to Johann Brighton,” I said to Antoinette.

“I could have you arrested for just knowing that.”

“Is that chart telling it like it is or is it just a fiction?”

“I don’t report to him.”

“Did you know that Minnie Lesser, the girlfriend of the man that Zella Grisham shot, is now Brighton’s personal secretary? She changed her name to Claudia Burns.”

The slip of a waitress brought me my snifter. I took a sip and savored the burn.

“But you claim that Grisham is not involved,” Antoinette said when the waitress was gone again.

“Somebody had to set her up.”

I was on shaky ground. I knew that Minnie couldn’t have been involved with the crime before it was committed but that didn’t mean she wasn’t pulled in after. And even if it was some big coincidence I still needed Antoinette working with me.

By any means necessary, as my father and Malcolm X were known to say.

The quintet was playing something from the Romantic period. It sounded like Brahms without the piano. Lowry turned her attention to the music while taking small mouthfuls of her pink drink. I allowed her to savor and listen, knowing that I had brought a bitter taste and a sour note to her investigations.

She was in a tight spot. If someone from the upper crust of Rutgers was involved, the solution of the crime might have been beyond her pay grade. She could get fired or even follow in the footsteps of Bingo and his friends.

She put down the glass and returned her full attention to me.

“I’m not afraid of a fight, Mr. McGill.”

“You should be.”

“Tell me something.”

“What’s that?”

“The person you came here with, were they white?”

“She was a black woman,” I said. “As a matter of fact you remind me of her in many ways.”

“What happened to her?”

“She was murdered.” A muscle in my diaphragm twitched.

“You loved her?”

“Not enough.”

“I’ve given up on black men,” Antoinette said as if this was somehow a logical continuance of our conversation.

“You don’t like us?”

“No, it’s not that. I find black men infinitely attractive and interesting. But they take me to a place that I don’t want to revisit.”

“Maybe down in Alabama,” I said. “In New York we might take you to the Romantic era.”

“I’ll consider what you said... about the robbery. I’ll look into it a little and get back if I find you’re being straight with me.”

Two blocks from my house, at nearly one in the morning, my cell phone hit a dour note.

“Hello?” I said as if I didn’t know the caller.

“I read about you in the newspaper today.”

“We all get our fifteen minutes,” I said.

“That’s okay if it’s not the last minutes of your life.”

“They were from Eastern Europe,” I told Hush, “serious as a motherfucker.”

“You want me to get involved?”

“Hold that thought.”

The apartment was dark and silent when I got in. The only light I saw came from the three bullet holes in Shelly’s wall.

Her door was open and she was asleep, a paperback book lying next to her on the bed. I flipped the wall switch and moved back into the hall. That’s when I noticed the faint glow coming from the little front room.

Tatyana was curled at the far corner of the sofa, reading a huge tome.

I walked in and she looked up, a little drowsy-eyed.

“What you readin’?” I asked.

She tilted the book up so I could read the dust cover: Historical Aspects of Globalization .

“Okay, I’ll bite. How old is globalization?” I asked.

“Ever since there was a river with people on, either side,” she said, revealing a much older soul than she seemed.

“What side are you on, Tatyana?”

The smile my question elicited was clear evidence why I feared for Dimitri’s heart, both physical and metaphysical.

“He came for me when I was in trouble,” she said. “He used everything he had and never blamed me for what I am. He did that once here and then again when I went away.”

I took the space next to her on the sofa.

“You know I don’t make judgments on people, right?” I said.

“How could you?”

“People like us don’t get to say what we think very often. What we know is too close to the bone for that.”

“This is true.” She closed the book.

“So when I tell you that there have probably been quite a few men who have come for you, saved you, that wouldn’t be a lie now would it?”

“I have always looked for powerful men like you and your wife’s son — Twill. Powerful men are what a woman needs — that’s what I believed.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Dimitri loves me.”

“Yeah.”

“Before I met him I thought that love was like money, that even it was money. I give you and you give me. But then I take away from D and he comes for me anyway. He wasn’t strong enough or rich enough but there he was. He looked so silly in his cargo pants and white T-shirt that I almost laughed when I saw him. It was like seeing a silly magic creature from a child’s book.”

“And what does all that mean for my son?”

“I will stay until the magic is gone.”

My cell phone sounded, punctuating her hard truth.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising to my feet. I was tired, very much so.

“Hello?” I said out in the hallway that led to the foyer of our large prewar apartment.

“Have you found Harry or my daughter, Mr. McGill?” Zella Grisham asked.

“I already told you that I got the names of the people that adopted your baby.”

“I want to see them.”

“I know you do. But the law does not recognize the relationship and so I need to go talk to them before I try to put you together.”

“Then talk to them.”

“First I have to get Rutgers off your ass and the cops off mine.”

“I don’t care about them.”

“So then you’re lucky I do. And as long as I have you on the phone can you tell me something?”

“What?”

“Your ex-friend, Minnie Lesser, what kind of woman was she?”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” Zella said.

“You want me to find Harry and then you’re gonna tie my hands?”

“What does she have to do with him?”

“Neither one testified at your trial. That puts them together in more than just the bed.”

“She was just a girl like me,” Zella said. “Nothing special.”

“What did she do for work?”

“She was a secretary.”

“What kind of secretary?”

“I don’t remember. She worked in a midtown office. Before that she was a temp. That’s how I met her. She temped at my law office. I was the one who introduced her to Harry. We all had dinner one night.”

“Was she bent?”

“What do you mean?”

“She seem like the women in prison with you? Like she would steal from her employers?”